Brickworks eyes WA growth

Brickworks
will review its West Australian and Queensland brick operations, which could lead to the construction of a new kiln in Perth following the restructure Victorian operations.

Brickworks managing director
Lindsay Partridge
said the company would make a final decision on whether or not to develop a new kiln in WA after reviewing the state’s operations in the coming months.

“We have a number of options and one of those options was for a new plant in Western Australia of a similar scale to Wollert [Victoria] but we’re still making up our mind," he said.

Brickworks rationalised its Victorian operations, reducing the total number of brick kilns from six to two and marketed the sites to developers.

The group closed down its Scoresby factory and sold part of the land to Mirvac. It then shut its factories in Craigieburn and Summerhill, which yielded another 180 hectares of development land. Brickworks has submitted its proposal to rezone the land for residential purposes, which should be completed in the next 12 to 24 months.

The group has received $117.3 million from the sale of Victorian land to date. “In some cases the land was worth more than the assets on them," Mr Partridge said.

Yesterday, Brickworks lit the second brick kiln at its state of the art facility in Wollert West, north of Melbourne’s CBD.

The new kiln doubles Brickworks production capacity at the Victorian site where works were first commissioned by Brickworks in 2004 at a cost of $125 million.

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The Wollert site replaces the Scoresby, Craigieburn and Summerhill factories, which were legacy factories from its purchase of the Bristile business in 2003.

The strategy reduced the number manufacturing staff from 154 to 58 and cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent.

“These new kilns use in the order of 50-60 per cent less fuel than the previous kilns," Mr Partridge said.

The combined Wollert plant can manufacture up to 170 million bricks a year and is far more efficient than the older works, which could produce more bricks but with more wastage. Fewer bricks would need to be produced overall to make the same number of “first quality" bricks, Mr Partridge said.

Victoria is one of the group’s best-performing states for sales: one in three new Australian houses is constructed in the state.